The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, the approaches described in this section may not be prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
The use of multi-function peripheral (MFP) devices has proliferated as offices have become more automated and less dependent on manual devices. MFPs have evolved from simple copying devices to document management systems. As many organizations similarly have evolved in size and complexity, these organizations require new systems and methods to organize, track, and control the dissemination of documents.
Partial approaches to handle these issues have been unsatisfactory for many reasons. One approach requires a user to manually apply some type of rights management to a document after the document has been made available to others through a computer network. During the period from document creation until some type of rights management has been applied, the document is at risk of being copied, improperly disseminated, deleted, or even altered.
A user could specify an electronic mail destination for the document. However, documents still travel relatively unsecured; thus important documents could still land in the wrong hands through chicanery such as address spoofing, or merely by accident should an electronic mail address be mis-entered at an MFP.